(It's really not about the cup.)

Saying goodbye

Frances has always struggled with pragmatic language (social language and skills in everyday interactions with others).

Partings for Frances have always been difficult in the sense that, at first, she didn’t know that speaking is necessary when people temporarily part ways.

Then, after some time, she realized that something needs to be said, but didn’t know what to say.

For us, for a while, it was good enough that she sensed a need to say something at all because we could slowly introduce her to some parting words. (We didn’t want to constantly correct her and risk damaging her self-confidence.)

But even when she was learning parting words, she still managed to surprise us with her responses.

In the above panel, I wanted to show that, as an ASD parent, there are times when we’ve temporarily accepted as “normal” something that would probably strike others as funny.

As an update: in the three years since the date of the panel when she was six years old, Frances went through a phase of using almost appropriate language. For example, when leaving for school, she would often say to me, “See you tomorrow”. Now, she will often say “goodbye” or “see you later”, if she acknowledges that I’ve said goodbye to her.